State Constitutional Law in 1941–1942

Executive Reorganization. In long and highly controversial opinions, the majorities of the Indiana and Louisiana supreme courts invalidated state administrative reorganization plans of a type whose constitutionality might conceivably have been treated as political questions. The Indiana controversy grew out of the repeal, over a Democratic governor's veto, of the Executive-Administrative Act of 1933. In place of an administration consolidated into eight departments, each directly responsible to the governor, the Republican legislative majority substituted an organization of four departments—state, audit and control, treasury, public works and commerce—each headed by a hybrid board composed of the governor and two elective administrative officers, or one administrative officer, the governor, and the lieutenant-governor. Existing tenures were terminated and powers of appointment were expressly given to the respective three-man boards. Upon adjournment of the legislature, this sweeping “reorganization” was immediately attacked on the grounds that it wrested authority from the governor and unconstitutionally delegated executive power to ministerial officers. Operation of the acts was enjoined in the lower court. On appeal, a divided supreme court declared the repealing statute unconstitutional. The heart of the majority opinion was the syllogism that under the Indiana constitution executive power, “including the administrative,” is vested, not in the executive department, but in the governor; that the appointive function is an exercise of the executive power; and hence only the governor may appoint.